Mary began to giggle, and Lizzy shot me a dirty look.
“We have to look. We do,” she insisted.
Earlier that day, Larry caught part of a radio transmission. While in the shop or storehouse, he tended to keep a digital receiver turned on. The device was generally set to scan the channels, but from the start he’d picked up nothing, aside from our own handhelds. Then there was a sudden and unexpected plea for help. Larry didn’t get the entire message, but it provided the town’s name, Martin, South Dakota.
“It’s not that distant,” I continued, “east of Chadron and just far enough north to cross the state line. We’ll travel like we always did, in the Jeeps with full supplies and well armed. We take a look, say hello if we find anyone, and then come back with the news.”
“Or run if they look questionable,” said Briana.
“Or shoot them,” countered Lizzy.
“We’ll approach slowly and carefully and check it out from a distance,” I clarified. “After we get a good feel, then we take the next step, whatever it is.”
There was a strong consensus in the community that this development had to be looked into. Even Cherie was clear on that point. More people would be welcome, so long as they were the right sort. Even if the groups didn’t join together, we could provide mutual support and a place to run if necessary. Unlike Edwin’s band in Oklahoma, these were close enough for such things.
Of course, it was assumed we would be the ones going, and I didn’t argue the point. A few others volunteered as well, including Dean and Eric. With the work on the castle essentially complete, both had been itching for some sort of meaningful challenge, but I said no. Five was enough. I wanted to move fast, and we all remembered how difficult travel became as we added cars on our way north to the Nebraska National Forest.
Unfortunately, we were unable to communicate with them from a distance. Alec said he would try to get a transmitter with real range set up. He planned on heading to Hemingford later – it tended to be significantly safer than Chadron – to see if he could snag one from the local police station.
Interlude – Dean’s Story
Dean, our intrepid carpenter, much like Briana, gets a second interlude. Now, Briana held back a portion of her story until she grew comfortable enough to share it. For Dean, the follow up is instead a sequel. You see, he had been having nightmares about Pamela. If you don’t recall, she was his long time friend who turned during the initial event, coming out of her tent sporting absolutely no clothing but covered with plenty of her boyfriend’s blood.
Logically, Dean knew becoming a zombie was not her fault, nor was Pamela responsible for the killing that followed. Yet… Yet Dean felt he should do something. He had to do something. He couldn’t bring the dead back to life, but if he was able to find Pamela, he could at least grant her some sort of peace.
She had not been among the attackers that first night at the lake camp, nor had she been with the zombies the second time it was struck. Additionally, Dean had never seen her on any scavenging or exploration runs. He’d asked us to keep an eye out as well, providing a detailed description, but we never encountered the woman either.
So, Dean started going into the woods on his own. The trips were supposedly for hunting, and he did bring back plenty of game. Even so, it wasn’t difficult to ascertain the truth. He took the risk of going out alone, after work on the castle was completed and I permitted it, in order to search for Pamela.
This story was related to me shortly before the incident with the raiders in Chadron. Dean had been on one of these little jaunts, seven miles from our settlement. He had a pistol in case he ran into any zombies but carried a compound bow for the actual hunting. He’d just pegged a rabbit, his second of the day, and was putting it in his sack when a sound caught his attention.
It was coming from the other side of a thicket. Dean carefully skirted the underbrush and discovered a gully. It wasn’t wide, maybe ten feet across, nor was it overly long at forty. However, it was deep enough that a person standing within couldn’t reach the top. It appeared to have been created by erosion, probably the flow of water during storms. One end was obstructed by some fallen trees. The other looked to have collapsed in on itself. What should have been a miniature canyon easily accessible from either side was effectively a box.
Pamela was trapped within. She was pacing back and forth, and every so often she would try to climb out. Dean could have done it, most children for that matter, but one of the shambling dead, with their poor coordination and nonexistent agility, would never get free. Her hands just slid across the dirt, unable to find purchase.
The moment she noticed him, Pamela turned and advanced, arms outstretched, mouth opening and closing, teeth clicking together. Dean took a step back and watched. She couldn’t reach him, but that did nothing to deter her. The zombie, like all of its kind, was unable to stop. She was driven.
“I’m sorry Pamela.”
Putting the bow down, he drew his pistol and took aim. Her hair was matted and tangled. Her bare feet were filthy and covered in dirt and grime. The rest of her looked almost human. Pamela’s skin was dead, pale with blotches where the blood had pooled, but it was unbroken and otherwise unblemished. And her face was just as pretty as Dean remembered, though twisted by the desire to feed.
He lowered the gun and took a seat on a nearby rock, remaining there for several hours. Dean did not share his thoughts during this period of reflection. That he was going to bring an end to Pamela was never in doubt. Dean was determined to see her at rest. Still, there were issues he had to sort out within his own mind. Only upon completion of these internal debates did he pull the trigger, turn around, and return to the castle.
Chapter XIII
We departed early the next morning, planning to reach Martin, South Dakota by traveling north on US-385 to Chadron, then east along US-20. At Merriman, Nebraska we would cut north along State Highway 61 – it turned into State Highway 73 after crossing the state line – which would take us directly to Martin. It looked to be about seventy five miles or so, less than an hour and a half drive under normal circumstances, not that those existed any longer.
“Think Chadron is always going to have zombies?” asked Mary.
In the background I could hear Lizzy demanding she give the radio back and not to be touching her things.
“Nyah, nyah.” Mary was still holding the transmit button. “Mine now.”
“Little brat. I do the talking.”
“My turn,” she laughed. “Be nice, or I’ll steal the batteries to your vibrator.”
“I do not have a vibrator!”
“It’s true Mary,” said Lois. “I would know about it.”
“What do you think Briana?”
“With her obsession regarding turkey basters, I’d say it’s very possible. She’s sneaky enough to hide things from Lois too. Lizzy just isn’t trustworthy.”
“Is that thing on? Damn it! And the baster was from the two of you, not me!”
“Anyways Mary,” continued Briana, “I think Chadron is something of a zombie resort. They do like the place. Just so long as they don’t find the castle, I guess I can live with that, assuming there’s any choice in the matter.”
“We should warn anyone we find. I wonder if other cities get them like that too.”
“Probably,” replied Briana, “or maybe. I don’t know. I’d guess it’s possible anywhere roads meet. Chadron isn’t as bad as it used to be though, before we shot so many.”
“Think this is going to be our last run of the year?” asked Mary, continuing the spree of questions.
“I’m thinking yes, at least for any significant distance. It’s getting too cold. One big snowstorm and we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere.”
I agreed with Briana’s assessment. We were likely good for this trip, but if we kept going out, we risked getting snowed in somewhere. And there’d be no plows to clear the roads. We could conceivably be trapped until spring.
&n
bsp; The conversation devolved into normal banter after that. We rarely drove in silence, and with batteries for the radios easy to come by – we had buckets full of them – there was no reason to conserve power. The replacements would lose their charge long before we got around to using the last.
* * *
Gordon, which we hit around midday, was the largest town we’d pass on this trip. That likely meant lots of zombies and all the associated dangers. Fortunately, the highway ran along its southern edge. There was plenty of open space and a decent line of sight, so we were able to see any mobs well in advance and avoid them. There were more wrecks than normal however, and we had to go off road a few times, once to get around an overturned semi. I’d just passed this when Lizzy called out on the radio to stop.
“What’s up?” asked Briana.
Through the rearview mirror, I watched her pull over and hop out of the Grand Cherokee.
“Toilet paper!” called Mary. She followed Lizzy and assumed her customary position as lookout. She had the radio in her left hand. “A whole truck load.”
“She’s right,” observed Briana. “Let’s go ahead and grab some.”
The rear of the trailer was open with boxes scattered across the pavement. Most had succumbed to the elements, rain destroying the cardboard and animals or whatever tearing apart the flimsy plastic. Still, the freight within appeared to be intact. It might be salvageable.
“Why not get it on the way back?”
“We should do it now,” she countered. “We only have one roll with us, and that’s in their Jeep.”
“Lizzy,” I asked accusingly, as we joined them, “did you steal our toilet paper?”
“Not at all trustworthy,” called Mary. “You have to remember that. She’s a bad, bad person, sneaky too.”
“I am not… Keep watching for zombies!”
“My fault actually,” clarified Briana. “We didn’t have enough in the house for that chamber pot thing in the washroom, so Mary and I took everything from the Jeeps. We meant to put some back but never got around to it. I found the one roll we missed during our last stop. Lois needed to go, so it ended up with them.”
“And I’m only now being told this? Come on ladies, try to include me in some of the discussions.”
“I thought you didn’t want to hear anything about female hygiene.”
“Briana, being able to wipe after taking a crap supersedes such things. Also, taking a dump is not female hygiene. It applies to everyone. That makes it normal.”
I drew my pistol and shot a zombie that was getting close. “Go ahead and grab whatever we need, but try to hurry. And be careful.”
She snorted. “I’m always careful.”
* * *
Merriman was basically a speck on the map. This town was tiny, very, very tiny, so we decided to stop and take a look before parking for the night. That would give us plenty of time the next day to reach Martin and hopefully find the other survivors. In the meantime we were doing a little scavenging.
“Fifth house with nothing in it,” said Lizzy. “Someone stole all our stuff.”
“Wasn’t exactly ours.”
“Well Briana, true. No. Change that. I wanted to loot it. That makes it mine.” She stomped off.
“I think there really is a settlement in Martin,” I said. “This is nearby. They could have easily emptied it out, much like we’ve been doing with Hemingford and Chadron. Small as it is, a group could check everything in a few days and take whatever they wanted.”
“No food,” agreed Briana, “except the rotted, pasty stuff in the fridges. Somebody took it all. Almost no zombies. Whoever was here did a thorough job. Not many rotting bodies lying about either.”
After the second assault on the lake camp, we stopped burying the zombies we killed. There were just too many of the things. We moved them away from creeks or other water sources, and we dragged them out of any building we were actively looting or might loot later, but that was about it. Most were simply left to decompose. This had brought up questions about disease, but with our limited numbers it was either get the stuff we needed or spend hours upon hours loading corpses into trucks and digging holes. We opted to allow nature to take its course, and anyway, it would be wrong to deprive scavengers of an easy meal.
“Come on out zombies,” called Lizzy.
“Anything?” asked Mary. She was standing in the street with Lois, roughly twenty yards away.
“Not a damn thing. I don’t like this place. Come on Jacob. Let’s look inside.”
I joined her with Briana keeping position by the door. We quickly scanned the small house. The pantry and cabinets were completely bare of anything edible, although we did find some adult movies in the bedroom closet. They were in a small cardboard box, unlabeled.
“Here,” said Lizzy, handing me a few. “You and Briana can watch those. I’m keeping these for me and Lois.”
“Girl on girl I presume.”
“Don’t be questioning my lifestyle,” she snapped.
I glanced at what she was holding. “Yep, thought so, but I do need to ask about the midget one.”
She blushed. “Variety.”
“You could give Mary some. Tell Lois they’re educational videos. Briana and I can place wagers on what might happen.”
“I don’t think Lois is ready for her little sister to have that sort of education yet,” replied Lizzy, her teeth almost, but not quite, clenched, “particularly if I’m helping her receive it.”
“It’s going to sneak up on you sooner or later. First she’ll be getting a boyfriend, then getting married, having kids, having grandkids who’ll call you Grammy Liz.”
She groaned. “Stop. I feel old enough as it is, and I’m nowhere near as far along as you.”
“Just give it a few more years. By the way, do they have Porn of the Dead by any chance?”
“Porn of the…” Lizzy’s jaw dropped. “Tell me that’s not real.”
“It is. The thing was made a few years before this all started. I mentioned it to Briana way back, on our way up here from Texas.”
“Zombie porn. Disgusting, just the idea of it.”
“Less so before they were real. Back then it was just a bit of variety.” I tapped the DVD starring a slew of little people. “The movie zombies were pretty similar to ours, intact and not really rotting but still looking dead, or covered in bad makeup as the case was. The not rotting part bugs me, in a big way. Wish I could figure out why or how it stops like that.”
She shrugged. “No fucking clue Jacob.”
* * *
The final stretch to Martin was a lesson in simplicity. The road leading north had been conveniently cleared of all obstructions, the cars and trucks pushed off to either side. Someone had gone through a lot of trouble to ensure there was an open route along that highway. Even better was the lack of zombies. We saw only a handful.
“This is weird,” said Lizzy, over the radio. “This is really, really fucking weird.”
“I’m agreeing with you,” replied Briana. “Not many bodies either, that I can see. It’s just like in Merriman.”
“If they have the people to move all those cars, then they could drag away the ones they shoot,” said Lizzy, “stick em in a hole or burn them. Maybe they just care more than us.”
“Briana.” I pointed out the driver’s side window. “Check out the buzzards.”
Her expression darkened. “That’s a lot of them,” she whispered, before relaying the discovery to the others.
* * *
“They had one really, really big fight,” observed Mary. Her face held a mixture of awe and sorrow.
The survivors’ compound was huge, consisting of four large commercial buildings. These were connected by walls of brick or lumber with the lower windows closed up permanently. In some cases it looked like entire sections had been heavily reinforced. There were watch stations on top of each structure, and a single large entrance. This had a city bus parked in front of it. The wind
ows were covered in sheet metal, and additional panels dropped to within an inch of the ground. When it was in place nothing could get past it. It was exactly like the one in the movie The Road Warrior, and it was substantially more effective than our plan of pulling an animal trailer in front of our own gate.
While their entrance was still intact, the walls were not. There were two large holes. The first was to the side of the actual gate. The other was on the far perimeter wall. Both looked as if they had been made with explosives. Scattered about these were the bodies of men, women, and children. A few wore heavy denim jackets with the same patches as the raiders we encountered in Chadron.
“We need to see if anyone’s alive,” said Briana.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Shoot anything moving that’s wearing one of those jackets. You too Mary. Don’t hesitate.”
“Jacob?” asked Lois. She was shaking.
“We’re all going together this time. No one will be left alone keeping watch. Don’t know why it happened, but I’m pretty sure the gang attacked these people. We know they’re dangerous. Remember what they tried to do to Steph.”
I led the way inside to see what was left, and I’m not ashamed to say that I’ll be having nightmares for the remainder of my life. The scene was horrendous. The community had been large – Mary counted two hundred and eleven bodies, excluding those in the telltale jackets – and there was no doubt that they’d fought back. It hadn’t worked out for them. There was nothing living within those walls and only a single zombie. Judging from his injuries, he’d been shot in the stomach and left to die. Every other body had a head wound. From the angles, it appeared many were inflicted after death.
Quite a few of the residents had been captured during the onslaught. I couldn’t tell if they surrendered or were overpowered, but it made no difference. The women, save some very old ones who had been beaten to death, were horribly abused. Many of the children were as well, both boys and girls. It seemed the attackers had no concept of too young.
Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse (Book 1): Sanctuary Page 37